One of the many great things about living in New York City is stumbling across public art projects. And earlier this week, Mommy Poppins staffer Raven did just that when she and her daughter spied one of Peter Woytuk's massive nature sculptures that are currently on view on Broadway. This particular one is called the Great Watering Can and can be found at 96th Street and Broadway. There are 18 works in total, all massive animals or fruits. You find them on Broadway from Columbus Circle to 168th Street through April 2012, and there's even an audio tour recorded by the artist. Just call 212-901-3310 from your cell phone.

Less whimsical but seemingly just as cool is Sue de Beer's Haunt Room installation on the High Line, which was unveiled just before Halloween. Located in the 14th Street Passage, Haunt Room is described as "an interactive structure designed to induce haunted feelings in the viewer using infrasound, an audio tone below the threshold of human hearing." In other words, de Beer is using subliminal sounds to instill scary feelings and sensations. The 15 x 15 x 9 foot structure is constructed from smoke-colored Plexiglas, and when visitors enter they encounter a 14-sided featureless chamber. We haven't been yet so we don't know how frightening it might be for kids. But it sounds scarily good.

Park and playground season is drawing to a close, and we've got good news and bad news to share about NYC's green spaces. Let's start with the good: The Central Park Conservancy is planning to overhaul all of the park's playgrounds (save for the ones that were recently renovated, like the West 110th Street Playground). Although according to The New York Times the Conservancy hasn't announced which play spots would be tackled first, Raven (her again) went to a community information meeting at the Dana Discovery Center a few weeks back and was told that the sorely out-of-date East 110th Street Playground would be first. No timeline has been released for the project, which is a major undertaking. Now for the bad (perhaps so-so) news: The 2011 Report Card on Large Parks, which surveyed 45 parks between 20 and 500 acres in NYC, was recently released, and while most green spaces earned As or Bs, some parks in lower income areas did poorly. The Bronx had the highest (Seton Falls Park) and lowest scoring (Claremont Park) parks in the city, and drinking fountains everywhere were the lowest-performing feature. You can view the entire report at the New Yorkers for Parks website to see how your local green space fared.

I've always felt that it's a shame that today's youth isn't interested in the space program the way we were when we were kids. When I was a child, space shuttle launches were major news; now they don't even happen anymore. So I was pleased to read that NYC may get a space museum of its very own, complete with the Enterprise Shuttle. (That makes me even happier since when it comes to Star Trek, I have a Geek Gold Card.) The museum, if it happens, will be located across from the Intrepid on West 46th Street. Nothing is definite yet, but you don't have to be a Vulcan to see the logic in this project.

And finally... vaccines. Specifically the HPV vaccine Gardasil (and no, this time it has nothing to do with a certain GOP presidential candidate's rants against it). Until recently, the vaccine was recommended for girls as a preventive measure against sexually transmitted forms of human papillomavirus, which causes certain types of cancer. Now the CDC is recommending that boys get the vaccine too. Ex-CDC director Dr. Richard Besser said on Good Morning America that he had his own sons vaccinated. I have two sons myself, and while I'm not anti-vaccine, I admit that all of the negative attention they've received over the past few years makes me think twice about shots that are "recommended" rather than "required." My boys aren't quite at the age where I have to think about this one yet; hopefully there will be more research available when they are. Add this to the list of things our parents didn't have to worry about.